Too many games released busted, broken, and basically in early access this year—it's time for it to stop

GamesToo many games released busted, broken, and basically in early access this year—it’s time for it to stopWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Aspyr)

Count Dooku Force-lightnings an enemy in Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection.

It’s the era of the comeback. No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76, on and on the list goes: games that had god-awful launches but pulled it back from the brink over the course of patches and expansions. Games that started out as player-repelling PR disasters end up beloved golden boys. In some cases, the studios behind them end up with better reputations than they would have done if they’d just released a functional game at the beginning.

It’s easier than ever to push a game out the door early in order to catch a particularly lucrative sales window, putting executive pay-packets and shareholder value ahead of devs and players, and only fixing the whole thing in post.

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1became what it always should have beenlast September, nearly a year after release; the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition began looking like GTAapproximately a month ago; will Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection ever recover from “probably one of the worst launches of all time”? Maybe with a few more patches, if it ever gets them.

Speaking of Star Wars, brace yourself for some kind ofoverhaul of Star Wars: Outlawsunder its new director. On and on it goes, gradually becoming an unpalatable new normal.

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(Image credit: GSC Game World)

Faust points accusingly at Strider.

I don’t mean to put Grygorovych in particular on blast; the studio hasa better justificationfor an undercooked game than any other in history, but her statement inadvertently crystallised a sentiment that has become all-too-common among games execs. We live in an online age—on PC, pretty much every single thing you play comes from a digital storefront, and even consoles have reached a point where physical disc drives are sold as strange, vestigial add-ons rather than the centre-stage of the whole experience. It’s easier than ever to push a game out the door early in order to catch a particularly lucrative sales window, putting executive pay-packets and shareholder value ahead of devs and players, and only fixing the whole thing in post.

It ain’t the devs—no one wants their name on a busted game, and no one wants the endless social media harassment that comes with it—it’s the head honchos.

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It ain’t the devs—no one wants their name on a busted game, and no one wants the endless social media harassment that comes with it—it’s the head honchos. They’re confident that, hey, if we make the team take a wrench to the thing after it comes out we can have our cake and eat it too, releasing at the most lucrative possible moment while still getting a decent game at the end of the run. Call it the early accessification of everything.

(Image credit: Konami)

Naked Snake and Eva look shocked.

It can only go on for so long, I think. No, I don’t mean that in some starry-eyed ‘surely the capitalists will see sense,’ kind of way, I just mean that you can only keep putting out broken games for so long before whatever trust was left crumbles completely. At some point people are going to stop pre-ordering and buying on day one in enough numbers to make a dent. Or I hope so, anyway.

So I’m calling for a two-pronged approach. You and me? We’re teaming up to keep our wallets in our pockets until games—and especially games from mega-huge publishers—prove that they’ve entered the world into a less-than-on-fire state. And devs? Devs have gotta unionise and support one another to give themselves the tools and power they need to push back on absurd demands from the suits.

And, well, to be fair, devs haveway better reasonsto be shoring up their own power right now than making sure I don’t feel like I wasted $60.

But still, putting out busted games with a vague promise to fix ‘em later isn’t acceptable, and if putting an end to it means taking power out of the hands of people who pull the purse-strings and putting it in the hands of people doing the work, or maybe even scaling down how ludicrously ambitious and unsustainable modern games are? Well, two birds with one stone, as far as I’m concerned.

PRODUCTSMetal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1Stalker 2Grand Theft Auto: The TrilogyStar Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection

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